Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture's relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. As a result, African governments are often provided conflicting...

The contents of the present work focus on contrasting the possible contribution of the funds from the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to improving the evolution of one of the economic variables that is usually included as an objective to be achieved by rural development...

The fundamental principles of the EU LEADER Programme are common in every member states. However the Programme was fit to the national legislative framework, institutional culture and social features, thus it was implemented with significant differences in the different EU countries/regions. Our...

Rural areas still play a major role within the EU, as Europe is still a fairly rural continent. Moreover, EU rural areas are going through greater challenges and major transformations. After the Eastern enlargements of the EU (in 2004 and 2007), they are getting more and more heterogeneous, in...

This paper looks at the Cohesion Policy of the European Union (EU) and investigates how the EU agricultural and rural development policies shape its influence on regional growth. The analysis of the drivers of regional growth shows that the EU Regional Policy has a positive and significant...

The main objective of this work is to review the recent achievements on the mechanisms explaining local and rural development, which underpin the current definition of rural areas in the European literature. The analysis carried out in this article acknowledges a gap between local development...

Many developing nations, especially the least developed countries, are subjected to recurrent spells of food insecurity. In order to understand food insecurity in these countries it is necessary to consider not only immediate or trigger-causes of food crises, but also its underlying or systemic...

Searching for possible viable economic pathways for small-scale farms in Eastern Europe, this study is concerned with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). We are mainly interested in the costs and benefits for both sides, the farmers and the consumers, when entering into a direct, trust-based...

Der vorliegende Bericht ist im Rahmen des Projektes "Dynamik der Nahversorgung in ländlichen Räumen" entstanden. Berichtsgegenstand ist die Förderung durch die öffentliche Hand im Bereich der Nahversorgung, die auf ganz unterschiedliche Weise unterstützt wird. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf der...

Polish rural areas, compared to other EU-25 member states, still show a high agricultural employment due to a lack of job opportunities in other rural economic sectors. In particular, in South eastern Poland the shut down of heavy industry companies in the early 1990s left many rural inhabitants...